Note: Like most of my movie reviews, this one is primarily intended for readers of the source material and analyzes the movie as an adaptation rather than an independent work.

The Basics:

Deep in the sewers of Derry, Maine, lurks the insidious It, an ancient, shapeshifting evil that poisons the minds of the locals, feeds on fear and children, and often takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Following only the past timeline of the novel, seven kids, all self-confessed losers in various ways, must come together to defeat It and protect others like themselves.

The Downside:

While the use of fairytale logic and the power of belief won’t bother fans, a single line of exposition would have been polite to help newcomers understand certain tactics the kids use against Pennywise as magic rather than continuity errors.

As could be easily feared and expected, the character of Mike comes off as a bit of a peripheral afterthought, which was often the case in the book, but made worse here by the transfer of the historian role to Ben. Meanwhile, the circumstances of the finale are oversimplified by the patently lazy damseling of Beverly in a way that was not in the book, although it must be noted that some much more extraordinary ill-use of Beverly was in the book, and is thankfully removed here.

An attempt is made to give her some dignity even in her damsel function, by having her resist Pennywise’s fear-inducement powers, but this only serves to muddy the heroism of the losers, by implying that an absence of fear is necessary to defeat It, rather than the willingness to do so in spite of their obvious fear, which is what makes the whole group of them so easy to root for most of the time.

This change to the structure of the finale also removes some of the purpose of Henry Bowers, the lead bully character who’s given just enough focus and development to make his ultimate insignificance (at least within this volume) disappointing.

The Upside:

As can be said for all the best Stephen King adaptations, this one makes the absolute most of its scares, while taking the best of the underlying framework of the characters and breathing life into them.

The performances of all the young actors are stellar and amazingly natural. When not being paralyzed by the Deadlights, Beverly oozes every ounce of cool she’s supposed to, mixed with all the world-weary vulnerability and, yes, fear that’s forced her to become that cool. The friendship of the whole losers’ club feels vividly authentic, and with the wise removal of any explicit mentions of cosmic forces compelling them to follow the group, follow the leader, follow the plot, their bond is forced to form and sustain itself on an entirely human level. They’re given the freedom to fight and disagree and determine for themselves that they still need each other.

Without that cosmic bestowing of unquestioned authority upon Bill, his leadership is made to stand on its own, and (who’d have guessed it?) it does. His relationship with his lost brother is played up to a heart-wrenching degree instead of simply stated, adding weight to everything he does. He’s even allowed to be wrong, prioritizing his revenge story over his friends, and he’s all the more likeable for his fallibility.

And then there’s Pennywise himself.

This Pennywise doesn’t spend the course of the movie idly threatening and taunting and waiting for his moment. This Pennywise is an unrelenting onslaught of world-warping terror. He’s powerful in his use of the kids’ specific fears, but also as a creature of darkness beyond charted reality.

The jumpscares are sparing but perfectly timed, and taken far beyond the usual startle that’s over before it starts. If you’re not scared by a loud music sting, don’t worry, that’s only the tip of the iceberg of screams you’re hurtling into.

Altogether a terrifying, heartfelt, and quite reverent adaptation given the time allotted, and a seasonal must-see for fans of both the book and horror movies in general.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

By day, Zatanna is a legendary Vegas stage magician. By night, she uses her vast and very real magical abilities to keep the world safe from all manner of demonic and dark mystical harm. Wait… I’m pretty sure the stage magic happens at night too.

The Downside:

Most of the time, Zatanna’s that character other heroes call upon for a special occasion magic-based issue or episode. She shows up, dazzles with her extraordinary power and charming sense of whimsy, and leaves the audience wanting more, as a legendary stage magician is wont to do.

Sadly, this volume makes it easy to understand why we generally can’t have more of Zatanna, however much we might think we want to. As fleetingly annoying as it may be when characters who’ve called on her before must conveniently forget about her or explain why she can’t be called in to fix other potentially world-ending problems with a few magic words, the rationalizing of continued stakes is even more difficult when that magical quick fix is the ever-present main character.

As a result, most of the major arcs of this omnibus revolve around creating or revealing different ill-defined and inconsistent weaknesses in Zatanna’s power, which apart from being problematic from a continuity standpoint, make it very difficult to feel that we really know Zatanna, no matter how much time we spend with her.

The Upside:

Thankfully, a good portion of the issues take the form in which Zatanna shines best -- episodic.

Easily the most enjoyable parts are the run-ins with magical monsters of the month, the weirder the better, from possessed ventriloquy dummies to time-manipulators who make her speak in palindromes. And naturally, one issue’s worth of vicious Zatanna/Constantine banter is worth the whole read, an extra concentrated dose of too-special-for-every-issue, within a comic about a character who’s already too-special-for-every-issue.

In all these self-encapsulated portions, Zatanna’s just as much fun on her own as she is backing up a more grounded lead, and when things drift further into the mythos, her cool, bubbly, slightly mischievous presence usually remains incentive enough to unplug from pondering the many questions begged by her brand of magic, to better enjoy the show.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

The time has finally come to unveil the cover and announce a release date for Some Side Effects May Occur​.

I don't mind sharing that this YA body-horror novel set in the not too distant future has been, without hyperbole, the single most difficult project I've ever worked on, taking me through some of the sicker corners of my brain, but it's finally complete, and without further ado, I'm proud to share a first glimpse of it!

Rachel Blum isn’t beautiful — yet. But she’s got it all figured out. All she has to do is save up enough money as a medical test subject to have her nose fixed, and make sure her friends and family don’t notice that she’s stopped eating. It’ll all be worth it if she can get chosen as a promising new talent by the Public Aesthetics Endowment, giving her access to all the loan money she’ll need to have her body made fully camera-ready, so her acting career can finally begin.

When one of the labs she works for begins trials for a miracle beauty supplement called Swan, Rachel’s skeptical of its claims. No more starving. No more sweating. No more surgery. She’s heard that pitch before. But this treatment is different. There’s no denying it when she drops fifteen pounds and grows three inches overnight. There’s no denying it when she scores both the next lead role in Roberts High’s legendary drama department and the attentions of its uncontested leading man. And there’s certainly no denying it when her newly out-of-control appetite for flesh starts becoming murderously selective.

Prepare for a grisly and haunting tale of one girl’s quest to be good enough at last.

This one's hitting shelves on September 5th, 2017, but you can preorder it now:

Superpowered private detective, Jessica Jones, is fresh out of prison and, as the volume title suggests, on the outs with her husband, Luke Cage. Both the Avengers and an anti-superhero underground organization want her help, each to bring down the other, while Jessica herself craves a slice of peace and normality and, as ever, to do the elusive right thing.

The Downside:

This new return to Jessica’s story abandons the more optimistic tone of The Pulse without fully recapturing the bite of the original Alias series, leaving it with a slightly more generic feel. The two plotlines of this volume never intersect quite satisfyingly, both of them seemingly constructed to connect with the wider Marvel universe more than to complement each other. As in Alias, the frequent two-page spreads of panels aren’t always visually obvious, making it easy to read the dialogue inadvertently out of order (one of my only complaints about the original series).

The obliteration of Jessica’s previous happy ending, and the dubious reasoning behind it, have some of the contrived feeling typical of an unplanned resurrection installment, and yet…

The Upside:

If there were ever a character who could snatch life-shattering angst from the jaws of happy ever after without too much suspension of disbelief, it would be Jessica Jones.

Jessica’s still the “hot mess dumpster fire” (as one of her in-universe critics puts it) with a heart of gold we’ve come to know and love, and she’s back in her gorgeously hideous home sliver of the Marvel universe, which is reason in itself for celebration.

Her sweet but always difficult friendship with Carol Danvers is back in force, as is her stony-yet-receptive professional façade over her unshakeable drive to use her talents for good, and the end of this volume holds a gut-punch that takes any tentative curiosity for volume two and twists it into an edge-of-your-seat wait.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Cath is a fanfic writer beginning her freshman year of college. She's absolutely terrified to be away from home for the first time, especially after her twin sister and best friend, Wren, refuses be her roommate, sticking her with a stranger, Reagan, and Reagan’s perennial hanger-on, Levi. The only place Cath feels at home is in the world of her favorite author, Gemma T. Leslie, spinning new stories for her pre-made characters. She’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to create new characters out of her own deeply private thoughts, let alone open herself up to the uncertainty of feeling something for someone new who doesn’t live inside her head.

The Downside:

Levi can be condescending in ways I found slightly too easily brushed off at points, and the excerpts of Cath’s fanfic can run a bit longer than they need to be in order to complement her story and give insight into her mind, yet not quite long enough to have the chance to suck in the reader in their own right. The book also seems to run out of pages just before the story ends, something I can appreciate in an intentionally ambiguous ending, like Eleanor & Park, but in a story this wholeheartedly hopeful, I could have gone for a bit more closure.

The Upside:

Enough griping.

Fangirl might be the most stunningly accurate depiction of social anxiety I’ve ever encountered in any medium. Cath’s mental patterns, defense mechanisms, and fear of unfamiliar people and situations are presented in a level of vivid yet unembellished detail that anyone who struggles with social anxiety -- or who has ever struggled to understand someone who struggles with social anxiety -- should read.

Cath’s relationship with her father is a major highlight, brimming with mutual love, respect, and support, complicated by the fear that Cath may be inheriting her father’s mental health challenges along with his intensity and wit.

The subjects of fiction writing and fan culture are handled with great care as well, presenting both defenses and criticisms of the concept of fanfiction while discussing the great and worthy challenges of originality. The irreplaceable necessity of connecting with other thinking, feeling people outside the safety of fictional fantasy is a major theme of Cath’s story, yet it coexists harmoniously with a celebration of the positive power of fiction, to inspire, communicate, and even bring people together.

And of course, every one of the many themes Fangirl touches on, from family to first love to creativity to learning styles and the unpredictable uniqueness of each human mind, can be found woven through poignant yet laugh-out-loud blocks of sparklingly quotable dialogue.

​Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

In a fantasy retelling of “The Goose Girl,” Princess Alyrra is sent far from the tiny kingdom she’s known all her life, to marry a prince she’s never met, in a land with a language she doesn’t speak, where royals have a habit of dying or disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

When her traveling companion colludes with a dark witch to steal Alyrra’s face, her name, and her prince, Alyrra discovers she’s relieved to escape the life that was laid out for her and disappear into the stables as Thorn, the goose girl. Accepting the switch for good, however, means keeping silent about the plot against the prince’s life unfolding before her eyes.

The Downside:

There are a few dragging, repetitive lulls, including one sequence in the middle involving Alyrra passing out, being discovered, and waking up being tended to in an unfamiliar place about three times in a row, without it being played for laughs. A few of the transitions are a little difficult to follow, with the dramatic cliffhanger ends of some chapters being left without direct follow up, and the answer to “what happened next?” later being treated as obvious and assumed. The pre-climactic wrinkle where Alyrra is most in danger is more anti-climactic, in that she’s rescued not truly by herself, nor even by the prince, but by the king who is hardly a character for much of the story.

The Upside:

The mood is set beautifully and immediately, welcoming the reader into a world of courtly intrigue and magic spells, without an off-putting crash course of names, places, and rules.

Alyrra is likeable and believable, in spite of the relative passiveness the structure demands of her for much of the story. She’s a girl who’s only beginning to discover and accept her own ability to impact the world around her (and the responsibility that comes with that), and that’s the whole point.

Characters here who resemble each other in ways that would normally herald a repeating motif turn out not to be alike at all, calling out habits of snap judgment, and the connected themes of power, corruption, justice, revenge, and the lines between them are treated with intense weight and nuance.

This is that incredibly rare story in which our hero is allowed to be responsible for the comeuppance of her villains (no convenient falling-off-a-cliff deaths here), and what she does to them is treated neither as proof of her own irrevocable moral decline, nor as a cool, easy, action-hero triumph. It’s ugly, uncomfortable, and perches at the edge of a slippery slope into an endless cycle of violence, yet the alternative of doing nothing is uglier still. And just when it seems Alyrra might retreat back into the apathetic despair of deciding that no sane, decent person would volunteer for the power to change the world, she’s given some of the best advice for any overwhelming problem.

“Start somewhere, then move forward.”

The romance is distant and borderline ominous for much of the story, without offering much to root for, or much emotional urgency for Alyrra to find the courage to save the prince, but it ultimately works nicely after one of the later twists, offering some much needed sweetness and optimism.

I’d go so far as to call Thorn a “gritty fairytale retelling” that does credit to each of those three words.

​

​Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Bobbi Morse, A.K.A Mockingbird, is a superhero. Not that her bosses at S.H.I.E.L.D or her former idols on the camera-facing core lineup of the Avengers tend to notice much, but she is a scientist and martial artist who helps people for a living. She particularly excels at talking down mutant twelve-year-old girls who can’t get anyone else to explain what’s happening to their bodies, and bailing out Hawkeye, who’s totally not her boyfriend.

The Downside:

While I find it works well enough, the non-linear presentation of these five issues may frustrate many readers and doesn’t add exceptionally much.

The Upside:

Bobbi exemplifies the best possible version of the terms “attitude” and “snark,” in potently concentrated doses. She’s the angry, undervalued female superhero who knows exactly what she has to be angry about and how to point it out in a few sharply chosen words at exactly the right moments, before continuing to get the job done.

The sarcastic sense of humor here is constant without ever feeling forced, and toys with Marvel conventions, not only about gender, but about such tropes as hordes of faceless non-human enemies (allowing heroes to show off their fighting skills without looking like jerks) and the dubious morality of S.H.I.E.L.D’s shadowy government status.

The dysfunctional relationship between Bobbi and Hawkeye is the real treat of this volume, and detracts nothing from her character. Quite the opposite. This is where things gets complicated, and we get to see, as cool as she is, why Bobbi Morse is not someone you want to be. Or be anywhere near.

Bobbi is a bad significant other. Really bad. Almost as bad as the average male superhero, but unlike those guys, her story doesn’t pretend otherwise. She’s that aloof, dishonest, emotionally abusive partner who will nevertheless show up to save you whenever you need it, the one you can’t help liking in those rare moments when things are going well.

In other words, she’s an action hero with a love interest.

Depending on how much patience you have for the abundance of bad male partners in fiction, Bobbi can be viewed either as a welcome reversal, giving the woman a chance to be the layered jerk for a change, or as a commentary on why this archetype is so readily accepted the other way around in the first place.

Altogether, this is a series I’ll definitely be following for as long as it- What? It’s already been cancelled?

Typical. Right, Bobbi?

​

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

The Lumberjanes are a scouting organization for, in the words of the back cover, “Badass Lady-Types.” Beyond earning survival badges and forging friendships (“to the max!”), the girls have to contend with a whole forest full of paranormal weirdness.

The Upside:

It’s harmless and intermittently cute, with a few educational interludes and the occasional laugh, appropriate for pre-teens getting into comics and looking for positive representations of female friendship.

The Downside:

The modern comic book renaissance has many better examples to offer of all the above positive elements.

Lumberjanes attempts to imitate the optimistic, lighthearted style of female-led peers like Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel, and even Harley Quinn, but seems to have confused “lighthearted” with “insubstantial.” In an apparent effort to demonstrate the independence and competence of the Lumberjanes, every obstacle they face falls before the might of their teamwork and smarts, effortlessly and within seconds, eliminating the possibility of any tension or stakes.

The girls are fairly interchangeable, particularly in their bulletproof self-confidence which, while admirable in role models for girls, leaves little room for conflict or even self-discovery when the entire main cast shares this same immunity to all doubt.

What plot exists is instead pushed along by bizarre paranormal phenomena that come and go not only without explanation (which can work), but without resolution or any identifiable point, at least not within this first volume.

The bright colors and mood of wacky hijinks are probably sufficient to entertain younger readers while introducing concepts like anagrams and the Fibonacci sequence, but there’s nothing here to earn the firm stamp of crossover appeal that Lumberjanes seems to aspire to.

​Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

With Hazel now a toddler, Alana and Marko are doing their best to get by on Alana’s salary from performing on the Open Circuit, but the high-pressure, drug-fueled work environment is starting to get to her, while the loneliness of taking care of things at home is doing much the same to him. Meanwhile, the Brand has taken up the chase for the fugitive family, and Prince Robot the IV’s son being born in his absence is only the beginning of his newest nightmare.

The Downside:

There’s a fantastic moment in which Alana tries to defend her addiction, citing the horrors she’s been through as a soldier and claiming that no one could possibly understand, prompting Izabel to remind her that she understands the costs of war possibly better than anyone.

Izabel is the ghost of half a teenage girl, bound forever to the physical realm after stepping on a landmine. And for reasons unfathomable, Izabel’s hanging, severed entrails, which by now are such a normal part of her appearance that it’s easy to forget they’re there, are out of frame in this panel which would otherwise be a beautifully horrible moment to re-notice them.

This tiny choice in the composition of the artwork for a moment that remains powerful anyway is all the negative commentary I can offer.

The Upside:

The kidnapping of Prince Robot’s son, by a crazed victim of the Robot Empire’s horrific class struggle, may be the best example yet of Saga’s ability to blur the line between heroes and villains, making opposing sides conflictingly relatable.

As for Alana and Marko, this is that standard chapter of an extended romance where the relationship itself, the one good thing that has thus far stood against all adverse circumstances, is called into question.

Only it’s not that standard chapter, because those chapters are awful, and this is Saga, the farthest possible thing from awful.

Those are the chapters when characters hitherto known for their steadfastness suddenly receive total personality transplants and begin lying to each other for no reason and making life-ending extrapolations from the tiniest of irritations, while the audience throws things at the pages or screen, checks their email, and waits for the happy couple to get over it.

Alana and Marko’s issues come from the reality of struggling to raise a child together in the poverty, pressure, and isolation of their fugitive status. They’re living the romantic happy ending of running away from it all together, and discovering that it’s not all that perfectly happy.

The drift between them, the breakdown of their trust, is so natural and yet so weighty and devastating, that it’s almost possible to believe that the core of the series -- their marriage -- might actually be over. The worst parts of both of them, not abrupt changes to their characters but elements that have been hinted at from the start, surface catastrophically. They both cross real lines, but because it’s both of them, and because of the solid foundation they once built between them, it’s easy to root for that reconciliation with a fervor so many breakup chapters can only dream of inspiring.
​

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After R’s return to life from zombiehood and the cascade of change his recovery has sparked in all of zombiekind, the world is in a delicate state of flux, its population on the verge of reclaiming its humanity on a colossal scale.

And the evil doesn’t like that at all.

This time, the forces of order through destruction and domination take a new form, no longer flesheating skeletons but a continent-wide network of insincerely smiling suits who call themselves the Axiom Group, determined to control or eliminate the resurrection power that seems to stem from R and Julie’s love. Along with their few surviving friends, the pair take off in search of some way to preserve what they’ve only begun to build together, but Axiom is dangerous for more than its weapons and numbers. It carries a connection to the pre-zombie life that R can’t remember and doesn’t want. Fighting Axiom means allowing its secrets to resurface from the basement of his mind, secrets that threaten to overwrite the very life he’s trying to hold onto.

The Downside:

The Burning World is decidedly more meandering than its predecessor. The frequent interludes narrated by the collective consciousness of all accumulated human experience are sometimes insightful and do include some plot setup for the end, but their quantity when combined with the more essential flashbacks to R’s first life slow the forestory down severely in places. It doesn’t help that much of that forestory, when we do get back to it, is taken up with our heroes rehashing new permutations of the same argument about the fact that they have no solid plan.

Abram, the group’s newest ally of convenience, constantly belittling and overruling Julie gets particularly grating, especially when he’s routinely right about her ideas being fickle and unhelpful. The ultimate point is the good one that everyone is uncertain, flailing in the dark, and making things up as they go just as much as R is, Julie included, and R can love her even better as a flawed, human equal than as an ideal on a pedestal, but this directionless flailing, however realistic, is unsatisfying in a narrative, and is only resolved in time for a lead-in to the third and final book, rather than a climax of its own. Meanwhile, this validated dismissal of the primary female character’s input seems to run counter to the general message of universal human respect, as do a few other small instances.

There’s a moment when R insists on running into a seemingly suicidal fight, asks Julie to stay behind out of danger, and leaves her with the thought that “she’ll either respect my wishes, or she won’t.” She doesn’t, of course, and he doesn’t hold this against her, but the hypocrisy of his hope that she will “respect his wishes” for her safety in the exact moment he’s disregarding her identical wishes for his, is never called out, so it’s difficult to tell whether such a moment is an excessively subtle piece of the overall commentary, or simply a contradiction that slipped by.

The Upside:

For all that, The Burning World makes abundantly clear where its heart lies, and it earns an A still bordering on an A+ for the weight of its content combined with the sheer poetry of its execution -- no less than readers have learned to expect of Isaac Marion.

R’s trek through both his present and past is a harrowing, blistering tour of every excuse ever concocted to deny a person’s humanity, or the value of humanity’s better nature altogether.

Because I have my own family to worry about first.

Because I’m too small to help.

Because God wants it this way.

Because there is no God, or any other form of purpose or point, so we might as well take what we please from whoever has it.

Because the fact that I have more than someone else must somehow prove that I did something to deserve it.

Because I am a real person, and they, for whatever quibbling difference of biology or geography, are not.

And so on.

This is the story of an ex-zombie, an ex-nothing, who thought all he wanted was to be a person with a life and now must decide what kind of person he is and what to do with that life. It’s the story of a man trying to build an identity in a world that largely considers masculinity and humanity to be synonymous, and measures both by one’s ability to establish a distinction of “us versus them” and cling to the winning side of it. It’s about the strength it takes to step back from that quickest route to feeling like a person and say no, I can do better than that.

The Burning World builds on Warm Bodies’ unique critique of the zombie genre’s usual hyper-indulgence of the instinct to dehumanize an enemy, developing the concept into a brutal and timely skewering of apathy, greed, and rationalized cruelty, while rooting itself back in the original’s celebration of life, of connection, communication, love, and the determination to create something better than what was there before. These are still the cure to unfeeling, unthinking, ever-consuming zombiehood itself.

At the same time, this remains a deeply personal story as well, pushing R and Julie’s relationship past the rush of first discovering each other and into the challenge of balancing and bridging their separate private struggles and impossible hopes for themselves.

Through all the themes large and small, the prose is, as ever, lyrical yet direct, unapologetically passionate, and able to make even the most obvious and universal of feelings fresh and new.

While Warm Bodies is the more satisfyingly self-contained read, and one I would recommend to anyone, I second Marion’s assertion that The Burning World can be read out of order. And maybe it can’t wait for the time it takes to catch up. As he says, this is a book for now.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!